“As how?” asked Binney.
“Each feller will take so much of the s-store, and he’s got to know where every single thing in his department is so he can put his hand on it in the d-dark.”
We poked around and overhauled things and sorted and fixed up till ’most noon. A couple of folks came in to buy things and stopped to talk and grin at us, and one old lady predicted we’d turn the Bazar into what she called a Bedlam in a week. Nobody seemed to think it was anything but a joke, but it wasn’t any joke to us, I can tell you. We were working. Yes, sir, if anybody ever worked, we did.
Along about eleven in come a man I never saw before. He was pretty tall, and half of him looked like it was neck. That neck stuck out through his collar so far you had to keep lifting your eyes a full minute before you got to his head. His hair was kind of pinkish, and his eyes were so close together they almost bumped when he winked. Outside of that he looked like any other man except for a wart just on one side of his nose. It was the finest wart you ever saw, and he must have been proud of it. I don’t know as I ever saw a wart that came anywhere near it.
I went up to wait on him.
“Howdy, my lad?” says he, sort of oozy-like.
It made me mad right off, because there’s nothing that riles a boy so as to have some man grin soft-soapy and call him a lad. What is a lad, anyhow? I never saw one, and I never saw anybody that would own up to being one. But you mustn’t get mad at customers, so I was as polite as a girl at a party.
“Pretty well, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Is the proprietor in?” he wanted to know.
“No, sir,” says I. “He’s out of town and we don’t know just when he’ll be back.”